In various industrial processes it is necessary to feed the leading end of a wide sheet of foil-like material into a gap between a pair of rotatable rolls. The term "foil-like" is not intended to signify that the material is necessarily of metal because other materials, such as paper, are passed between pairs of rolls, for example in a calender during the course of manufacture.
A particular application, however, is to the feeding of the leading end of a wide sheet of aluminium foil into the gap between the work rolls of a rolling mill. In such an application it is usual for a human operator to grip the longitudinal edges of the sheet and to urge them apart to hold the front edge of the leading end taut and to feed the leading end into the roll gap. If, however, the width of the sheet of material is wider than about four feet, it is not possible for one human operator to grip both longitudinal edges of the sheet of material.